Complications

Complications

Pull yourselves up from the bootstraps

we tell them, ignoring the obvious fact

that they do not have boots, that their feet

are caked with dirt and cut through with glass

from going around unable to afford any shoes.

Use your bootstraps to pull yourselves up

like our great-grandfathers did, we say, patting ourselves

gently on the backs, thinking fondly of their legacies.

The white, American farmers who were given money

to buy land and got lucky enough their slaves knew how

to make the crops survive the frosts and droughts

and luckier still their children did not all die of flu.

Hard work, we suggest, as the means to an end, when

a starving person knocks at the door–ashamed–and asks for food.

You should be fine, just walk it off, the doctor tells an old man

before sending him home. And that night he dies in his bed,

from complications of a stroke the doctor didn’t see.

Butterfly Doors

It’s all business in the left hand lane.

People hurry to the next room where

they will sit or stand, perhaps eat

and have some coffee sweats.

They could talk or they may

just stand and stare out a dirty window,

cry at the sight of an old woman

shuffling, hobbled at a purely

perfect slightly obtuse angle

holding tightly to the bags wrapped

twice around her wrists.

Don’t tap the brakes when

there are cars behind you,

don’t feel nervous when you

need to execute a right hand turn

and merge into the flow that’s

what driving instructors will tell

shaky teenagers who pretend

to not notice or be concerned

that they could kill someone

with the metal machine

completely encasing them.

10 and 2 isn’t natural, but

neither is dying

your hair the

color of your grandmothers’.

Silver gray white, so bright

your mother has to squint

when you

go to visit her and help

sort through the hospital

bills piled ceremoniously

as a center piece

on the coffee table.

Light reading. A

table she inherited from a

woman she never even met

on her now deceased

husband’s side of the family.

She looks away,

looks at the closed curtains.

She stays in the middle lane

when she drives you home.

But wait there's more

On nights when I can’t sleep

I take a tiny piece of myself

and turn it inside out.

I peer closely at what

lays within there, just right out of view.

And when my pinky finger’s

cuticle reveals my past life’s journey,

I close my eyes and watch those

memories play out along their lines.

I traveled to China,

to Japan, to islands unnamed

in shallow seas.

I wore a hat and scarf

at all times and drank

tequila from a tray.

I raced myself on the beaches

and swam inward, with the current.

I turned to tell you that I love you

but was by then alone of course.

Pieces in places

Dear Mama:

I lost your ring in Nicaragua. Handed it over to thieves in bandanas with machetes, my fingers swollen with the sticky heat, I almost couldn’t get it off. I don’t remember if I cried or not.

I threw your shirt out in Brooklyn when my roommate gave me bedbugs. Blame was easy to assign, paranoia was not easy to suppress. You were there for most of it.

I can’t find your life story, the handwritten memoir I wanted as a Christmas gift the year after I graduated.

I gave away the painting you made for me to a boy who wanted something to remember me by a month before we broke up and I never saw it again.

I miss all these pieces of you. I wish I could find them in the corners of the world they’ve been shuffled to, summon them back, hold them near my chest.

Pasha we love you are you ok

1. it’s pasha on the footbridge to the cemetery
2. we see him through the leaves and branches
3. but can’t reach him, can’t call to him
4. because he thinks nobody is watching he takes out a picture from the inside fold of his worn-out wallet
5. he tears it in two then fours then sixteens
6. until his thumbs are too big to grip to further rip
7. he drops it all from his palm onto the field below him and turns before watching the papers spiral forever, not falling
8. we are the ones to stay and stare. we don’t leave until each piece has landed on the ground.
9. at home that weekend we watch pasha’s eyes
10. for hints of feeling
11. but he looks the same as always.

Ocean State

I miss standing at the edge of the sea.

The foamy carcasses of now-rotting seaweed that

dogs always take such care

to smash their furry hides into.

Delicately dabbing a bit of

seagull shit on top, too.

Plovers popping up

and down the shoreline,

losing their games of chicken against

the tide’s rolling belly-laughs.

Water muting rocks clattering and

every once in a while–

a tinkling of blue or even

purple (anything but green or brown)

glass that has traveled

maybe miles, maybe feet,

through salt and sun to find itself

tucked up under this patch of drying sand,
softened and rounded
by the dark, full ocean.

Gobbinjr

i just wanna be a firefly

i just want the human race to die

singing along so screamingly my voice cracks and buckles,

racing upwards in a white car with an old best friend

in the passenger seat. listening, looking

out the window with her hands in her lap, eyes

widened by the twist tie switchback curves in

this old potholed road.

how’s school, one year left?

she asks and i nod but can’t stop singing

even though i know she’s nervous. more like

because. because she’s nervous and it feels

better to not care than assuage her worries;

since even if i do–i’ll still know

that she lives with her fiance in a

huge brownstone in the south end

with her huger ring and talks most days about

the wedding and now i live in this mostly brown

and gray town with mountains and sometimes

steal toilet paper from restrooms at the university.

In Memory

Cold feet in the sheets,

antsy boy with the shapely butt,

think about him sometimes.

Search out his names–he had four, right–in memory,

then type them in the blinking search bar.

Back then, afternoons were: polishing glass, folding whites.

Behind the oak bar; shaking, mulling, stirring, tasting. Straw sips, head bobs.

Sidewalk steaming, trash bag wreckage spilling totems

into the street. Taxi cabs blinking hazards late into the night,

when we clocked out, but hung around. Wine behind the corner,

so guests don’t see. Wait and hope maybe he’ll stay too.

James Rafael Anthony Marren. Brown eyes underlined

with freckles and my own gaze unable

to let him go. Where did his bird bone shoulders go

each night, close to dawn when we finally left, stumbling

into fresh air. He always walked the other way.

You say I say

You say the world is empty.

No. The world is filled

with anything but emptiness

trees hills mud bushes branches weeds puddles rocks pebbles sand cars ants flowers hats gloves

don’t you see that stuff?

Sure nobody gets out alive but remember, also-

nobody runs straight the whole time.

Once we have

once we’ve shaken each other loose

before pretending we are

strangers. there’s a short-lived, brief-heavenly

moment. respite. goosebumps.

when i touch and feel your teeth

without my tongue

having to leave my mouth for what

historically tends to be the last time.

were we our names

were we our families

are we our hair

are we our bodies

To burrow

Is it dating

if you no longer go out

but burrow instead

inward

like the tin of Thanksgiving pie that collapsed

in our fridge three weeks ago.

We both thought nobody noticed.

Jogging in laps

There are things you have to do for tax purposes,

for the constraints of living in four walls

with a roof over your head.

Things you might not have thought of.

Running miles in the footsteps of our fathers,

not changing anything for no-one either,

mittens hanging off damp wrists,

committed to the cause.

Round out the corners, shorter each time;

choose and curve our own trajectories.

Pace. Pace. Keep in line.Step, Stride.

Maybe the leader will change

in a few more loops.

Ancestral helices swirling,

everything is a lollipop from the old doctor’s office.

Weather Translation

Having moved to one place

so far from home where

the earth gleams mutely from the sky down

onto mountain tops barely traceable,

whited out behind unknowable clouds,

and now receiving with two bleeps

of computer sound:

an email

from a strangerman who does not

spell your name right.

But says in lots of             words

and               lines—

that as far as you can tell mean    

nothing             and

the same thing at once—

something about measles shot,

needing documentation,

for reclassification,

enrollment, immediately, consideration.

But none of your family knows, when you

wait the necessary hours and

call them to ask, what measles shots is.

1.6.17

Sit in your own blood!

All day long, for free, on us.

You can move about and run your errands

as if you don’t have whole layers

of yourself seeping out and down your legs

under those fashionable capri pants of yours.

No-one will know because we keep these

panties dark to match the lining you expel.

A small puddle gathering just under your bum

means the magic’s working wonderfully.

As you cross the street to buy a bagel.

you may notice a slight moisture

but that’s just the sensation of being a woman.

Doesn’t it feel good and lucky?

This trial period won’t last long so be sure

to dial 1-800-modernity today.

Gray Hallways

my boyfriend’s other girlfriend

is a boy and we all three have

miles to sleep before we go

venturing down the lonesome halls

and stepping lightly over spiders

in morning darkness where

creaking doorframes bleat out

our shadow existences and subway

rumbles spill a pear from the counter

to land precisely between two bare toes.

Good gods not new gods

Good gods

are everyday getting

few and far between

                                       pull yourself up

                                      by the bootstraps young man.

walk to the Savers store

with gold coins

in my palms,

annoint the broken vases

crooked tables

cracked paintings

which people will

buy or barter for and

bring to their own

churches, their own piece of land.

spread this off-brand salvation

as my last ditch hope for a not quite nation.

open my arms.